Mehrsprachigkeit in Europa: Plurilinguismo in Europa ... - EURAC

Arabic Language Learning and Motivation
2.1 Writing Arabic made easy
Mastering any language well enough requires developing the capacity to write it. Colloquial
Arabic is almost impossible to write. Writing colloquial Arabic dialects destroys the real
language, and is actually almost impossible to master. In actual fact, written colloquial Arabic
is almost impossible to read. If one looks at what has happened to the English language recently
as a result of the advent of modern communications; e-mail and mobile telephone sms, and the
rather strange style of writing that has developed that simplifi es words; i.e.; You became u,
For became 4, To became 2, At became @ etc.
Table 1 shows an intelligent joke that was sent to me by a friend who knows my interest in
teaching/learning languages. It demonstrates how a language changes identity completely if
left to the whims of the general public.
The European Union has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the offi cial
language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some
room for improvement and has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would become known as
“Euro-English.”
• In the fi rst year, “s” will replace the soft “C”. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants
jump the joy.
• The hard “C” will be dropped in favour of “K”. This should Klear up confusion, and keyboards
kan have one less letter.
• There will be growing public enthusiasm in the second year when the troublesome “ph”
will be replaced with “f”. This will make words like fotograf shorter by 20%.
• In the 3 rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage
where more komplikated changes are possible.
• Governments will encourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a
deterent to akurate speling.
• Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent “e” in the languag is disgrasful and it
should go away.
• By the 4 th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replacing “th” with “z” and “w” with
“v”.
• During ze fi fz yer, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords containing “ou” and after ziz
fi fz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.
• Zer vil be no mor trubl or difi kultis and evrivun vil fi nd it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze
drem of a united urop vil fi nali kum tru.
• Und efter ze fi fz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.
• If zis mad you smil pleas pas on to oza pepl.
Table 1. Developing a new European language
Globalized or young people’s Arabic has also developed a spelling of its own. The hamza
became the (2); the ‘ain became the (3); the ha became the (7)…
Every Language is taught with some logic and has to be accepted by the learner even with
some illogic within it. This example was given by an English teacher; How do we write “fi sh”?
One possible way of writing it is “ghoti.” If we take the “gh” from the word “tough” and the
Multilingualism.indb 79 4-12-2006 12:25:30
79